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It might seem like it, especially if you have to share space with them, but there are tons of records they don’t have. Every collection needs a certain number of weird records. Here is a guide to records that are sure to delight a vinyl fan with unusual tastes. They happen to be in stock at many Bull Moose locations.

This record has a wonderful mix of styles. It has that North African sound, but the organ adds a certain loungey element. There’s even kind of a bossa novaish beat in the first track. Naima Samin must be the singer. She can do a lot of things with her voice that most Western singers cannot.

Many collectors love colored vinyl. The Hour of the Witch is on green vinyl (see the green on the cover?) This is a reissue of Gundella’s self-released spoken word LP about witchcraft. She explains her ideas about magic on side one. Side two should teach you how to cast your own spells. It includes a great booklet with all sorts of newspaper clippings and an essay by her daughter.

You have to be careful with this one. At first listen, The Free Design might strike you as Partridge Family-level cheese. Careful listening reveals a super creative approach, especially with the vocal arrangements. It’s like if The Mamas and the Papas backing tracks were written by Ennio Morricone’s assistant.

On Kites Are Fun The Free Design are two brothers and a sister. Their other sister joined for future albums. 59th Street Bridge (Feeling Groovy) didn’t seem to fit on whatever Simon & Garfunkel album it’s on. The Free Design manage to capture whatever S&G couldn’t. I guess you could say they made it groovy.

This is what you get when a science fiction fanzine editor teams up with a Hollywood sound effects guy. Using late 1950s/early 1960s technology, they pulled off something pretty darn cool.

Side one contains Forrest Ackerman’s history of science fiction. He switches back and forth between his history and actual science fiction, it’s hard to tell if what he’s saying is real or not. He takes us on a time travel trip at the end. Frank Coe adds sound effects.

Frank Coe fills side two with the titular music for robots. It’s an electronic sound collage, much denser and more interesting than what was coming out of academic electronic music studios at the time.

While not as well-known as many of his albums with Pink Floyd, Amused to Death, deserves careful listening. Waters comments on many things we may have missed because we are “amusing ourselves to death” watching television. Fans will be in familiar territory while finding new ways to think about the world.

The original mix was known for its expansive stereo image, with some sounds seeming to come from outside your speakers. The barking dog at the beginning truly sounded like it was coming from the house next door. The new surround sound mix builds on this, creating an immersive environment in which the listener is enveloped by the sound effects and music. This cinematic experience suits the album perfectly. My dogs ignore my home theater system. The war scenes near the beginning of Pink Floyd: The Wall don’t affect them no matter how loud I play it. The barking dog at the beginning fooled them and thought their buddy Sawyer was outside.

The sound effects are really cool, but it’s the music where the mix really matters. There is a lot going on, so pulling some of the instruments around the sides and to the back makes everything a little easier to hear. And you do want to hear Jeff Beck’s guitar solos, don’t you? (Side note: If you ever wondered how Jeff Beck might have handled the opening of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” from Wish You Were Here, find out here.)

The album was very well engineered to begin with and sounds fantastic in stereo or 5.1. The big songs are huge. “What God Wants” is nice and heavy, the gentle moments are super quiet, and the all the vocals jump right out at you. Waters uses all his vocal tricks while often sharing the mike with some incredibly strong female singers. (Another aside: after my first complete audition of the Blu-ray, I checked out Audio Fidelity’s new SACD release of Joe Cocker’s With A Little Help From My Friends. I’d have to give the sonic nod to Roger Waters and sounding better than an Audio Fidelity release is no small feat. I still recommend the Cocker disc, naturally.)

I encourage anyone who is curious about listening to music in surround sound to attend Thursday’s event. It’s an amazing way to experience great music. I promise you will be blown away. (Also, Sony was kind enough to donate a CD, a CD/Blu-ray package, and some posters to give away Thursday night. )

If you listened to a lot of hip hop in the 1990s, you probably heard J Dilla’s beats. He produced tracks for A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots, De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, as well as his own group Slum Village.

His mother has curated this incredible box set called The King of the Beats, which collects a bunch of his unreleased beats on four 10″ records, a cassette tape, and a 3.5″ floppy disc.

Let’s start with the box itself. The box is made of lightweight wood, so it’s very sturdy but not unreasonably heavy. It’s made to look like the SP 1200 drum machine/sampler. Jay Dee must have loved his SP 1200. He raps or talks about it on several tracks.

Check it out. Real hinges. By the way, those aren’t real jacks. It’s just really well printed.

When you open it, you’ll see that they cared enough to pack bubble wrap inside to protect the contents in shipping. Speaking of shipping, the set comes in a custom box with a styrofoam holder to keep the box from getting dinged, even if the shipping carton is slightly damaged.

A foam tray holds the everything in place. Note the cutaways you can allow you to easily remove the contents.

The four 10″ LPs contain 40 tracks from J Dilla’s “Batches” series. The images on the fronts are kind of blurry, but the image is apparent when you put them together. The backs are a puzzle too.

Under the records, we find a Certificate of Authenticity signed by his mom, Ma Dukes, and a short, but nice book with a couple of essays and some great pictures.

The tape contains a totally finished song. Make sure you put it back with the tape side facing the left, so you don’t touch the tape when you get it out of the box next time.

Don’t forget the 3.5″ floppy disc. For you younger folks, it’s kind of like a big flat USB drive. It contains all the multi-tracks for an un-released J Dilla production. All you need is an SP 1200 to play it back!

This detail of the front of the box shows what a 3.5″ disc drive used to look like.

How about the records? Record one was pretty quiet, with only a little surface noise. It begins with a rough recording of J Dilla talking about his SP 1200 over a beat. What stands out immediately is his big punchy snare sound, which you can hear all through this side. A lot of these recordings are finished tracks, with bass lines and everything. All that’s missing is an MC. If you’re not up to it, you can enjoy these tracks as they are

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In short, this is a great set, produced like only a mom could. There aren’t very many hip hop box sets out there, so let’s hope this starts a trend.

Tom Petty’s new album, Hypnotic Eye, was released yesterday on Blu-ray Audio. It’s on CD and vinyl too, but this review will focus on the Blu-ray.

Let’s get the music out of the way. It sounds like you think a (good) new Tom Petty should. It’s got a mix of his deceptively simple well-crafted rockers, mid-tempo songs, and a really cool smoky ballad. Even my wife likes that song. This album won’t create many new fans (besides my wife) but old fans certainly will enjoy it. Audiophiles who think Petty is OK should buy this because…

The Blu-ray is fantastic. Don’t let anybody tell you can’t hear the difference. You can!

It contains stereo and 5.1 mixes of the album and very limited video content. Both mixes contain the same bonus track that is on the LP.

The stereo mix is the same as the CD, but the Blu-ray allows for 256 times greater resolution than the CD. That means that the more complex sounds such as distorted guitars and Petty’s gravely voice have a lot more presence and detail. Can you hear the difference? Yes, you probably can, if you listen on a half-decent system and pay attention. You don’t need fancy equipment or special training.

It’s also more dynamic, meaning that the subtle changes in volume human musicians make are better reproduced. You shouldn’t notice that. Most likely you will think that the music is really expressive, and rocks when it needs to.

There is a huge difference between the blu-ray to the mp3 album preview streams you can find online. The blu-ray has way more bass and power. Petty’s vocals jump out at you. The drums sound much better, etc. It’s night and day.

Some 5.1 mixes have the music swirl around you. That’s prefect for Pink Floyd and Beck, but for a rock record, surround sound should be much more subtle. Here most of the action is in the front three speakers. Some of the instruments creep towards the sides a bit, but that sounds very natural, like you’re in the studio with them. Petty’s vocals and some guitar solos sometimes come out of the center channel. This nicely emphasizes his singing without having to actually make him louder. Sometimes it sounds like he is singing directly to you.

Don’t think for a minute that you can’t appreciate the better sound. You will feel like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are giving a private concert in your living room. Trust me. If you plan to buy the CD and have a Blu-ray player, consider getting the Blu-ray. You’ll be glad you did.

Do you collect old DVD-Audio titles? Feel free to avoid The Best of Atomic Rooster unless you find a cheap copy. This is a great example of when a good stereo mix crushes a poor 5.1 mix.

Atomic Rooster is best known because Carl Palmer was on their first album They released an excellent proggy doom metal album, Death Walks Behind Youafter he left in 1970. It’s dark like early Black Sabbath, but the grooviness reminds one of newer bands like Graveyard and The Sword. Much of the prog feel comes from Vincent Crane’s piano and organ.

Doom metal fans certainly should get to know Atomic Rooster–just not with this release. The label that released this has been accused of creating fake 5.1 mixes, but this sounds like a genuine 5.1 mix to me. Unfortunately, it’s not a good mix and the fidelity is disappointing.

Last word: great band; inessential purchase

Note: This is the first in a series of reviews of music for people with surround sound systems. Coming soon: The Yes Album, Quadrophenia, and some older hard-top-find titles.

The Beatles’ first professional recordings have been reissued numerous times, but never, as far as we know, on pink and red splattered vinyl. Only 1000 copies were made. This is for the Beatles fan who thinks they need everything.

If you are still building your Beatles collection, you need these tracks on some format. “My Bonnie” and “Sweet Georgia Brown” were the two songs that brought them to future manager Brian Epstein’s attention. “Ain’s She Sweet” has a fantastic vocal from Lennon and “Cry For A Shadow” is a very cool instrumental by Harrison & McCartney.

I was excited to see that Mark Olson (formally of the Jayhawks) was playing in Portland on Thursday the 7th. I’ve been trying to save some green but figured he wouldn’t be around Maine again for a while so I ponied up the money and myself and my domestic partner headed over to One Longfellow Square (which is fast becoming my favorite place to see a show.)

I love it when a band has no opening act, which was the case for this show. Mark and his touring partner/wife Ingunn Ringvold took the stage promptly at 8:05 and treated the small but enthusiastic audience to an almost two hour set. Now I’ve got to admit that I only recently discovered Mark Olson’s music with the release of Many Colored Kite. I’ve known and listened to the Jayhawks’ music casually for years now but after I experienced car problems on two separate occasions while listening to Tomorrow the Green Grass (on cassette even!) I figured that the Jayhawks had cursed me somehow and that I should probably never listen to them again. Looking back, I think the fact that I was driving an ancient Mazda Protege with a questionable transmission probably had more to do with the car trouble than Mark, Gary & the boys. Anyway, I think that Many Colored Kite may be one of the best albums I’ve ever heard so I was excited to hear these songs live and what the musicians would do with them. Sadly, they only played one track of off Many Colored Kite but that was ok because the rest of the set list was filled with solo tracks from Mark’s almost-as-awesome-as Many Colored Kite album Salvation Blues as well as some faithful to the source material versions of Jayhawks tunes and a couple of early Jayhawks tunes that Mark and Ingunn performed with only hand percussion. A joke(?) was made onstage about looking for backers to finance a re-recording of Hollywood Town Hall in this fashion. I for one think it would make a great Record Store Day release but after Mark’s quip about YouTube taking the place of record stores; perhaps he’s not interested? The set also included at least one tune from Mark’s Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers project and some good-natured stage banter about deer, littering, the difficulties of an intercontinental relationship, and the fact that Maine is always dark and rainy when he visits.

The show was a lot of fun, the price was right ($15) and any show that I can sit down at is a show that I like. Thanks to the folks at One Longfellow for bringing Gary Olson to Maine. Keep ’em coming.

Below is a cruddyy picture I took with my phone. You’re not imagining things; Gary Olson really does look like Bill Murray. I’m thinking he may get that a lot.